Lauren Kate

Biography

Kate was raised in Dallas, Texas, and has a master's degree in fiction from the University of California, Davis. Kate has stated that experience of the "Old South" in the Atlanta area (she went to college at Emory) inspired her to set Fallen in a Civil War era academy.

Kate has stated that her high school did not provide the basis for Sword and Cross in the Fallen series. In fact, she based the high school setting of The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove on the Dallas high school she attended (Plano senior High School).

The Fallen series employs Kate's many months of theological research. She had gotten the idea for the series from a line in Genesis that she came across whilst studying the Bible in graduate school in California.

Kate married Jason Morphew, a singer-songwriter, in 2009. They have a daughter, named Matilda (born February 2013) and a son, named Venice (born June 2014). The family currently lives in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles.

Work

Her standalone novel, The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove, was released on November 12, 2009, with her second work, Fallen—the first in the Fallen series—also released that year. Torment, the sequel to Fallen, was released on 28 September 2010. It debuted at number 1 on the New York Times Bestseller List (Fallen came in that week at number 2), remaining at that position through the week of October 17. The paperback edition of Fallen debuted at number 1 on the list, as well. The third book in the Fallen series, entitled Passion, was released on June 14, 2011. A new edition of Natalie Hargrove was also released on the same day as the paperback edition of Torment. On June 23, Passion reached number 7 on the USA Today Bestseller List, for books overall. On July 3, 2011, Passion qualified the Fallen books for the Series section of the New York Times Bestseller List; it entered the list at number 2, behind the Hunger Games books. Each of the aforementioned books has appeared atop many other countries' bestseller lists, as well.

Fallen in Love—a collection of novellas set in the Middle Ages that tell the back-stories of several of the Fallen series' main characters—was published on January 24, 2012. Rapture, the final installment of the series, was published on June 12, 2012. Unforgiven, a spin-off novel featuring the side-character Cam Briel from the series and his love Lilith, was released on November 10, 2015.

Kate has toured the United States and circled the globe several times whilst promoting her books, staging events in England, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Hungary, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Disney optioned the film rights to the entire series on the day of Fallen's release (December 9, 2009).

Random House released the first book of Kate's subsequent series, Teardrop, in October 2013. A prequel novella, titled Last Day of Love, was released two months later in December 2013.

Fallen series

Teardrop series

Standalone novel

Inspiration for characters

Kate has said that her characters are based on people that she knows, such as her husband being the "original" Cam Briel, a character from the Fallen novels.

Film adaptation

The first movie based on her book Fallen is tentatively scheduled to be released in 2016.